BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to examine the characteristics of a new arm crank ergometer for measuring oxygen uptake and biomechanics parameters.METHODS: Subjects performed two protocols that employed fixing and not fixing the body trunk. During the test, a range of physiological parameters was measured including VO2, HR, and RPE. The movement of arm cranking was recorded with four high-speed video cameras, and the three-dimensional coordinate of each reflective marker was recorded.RESULTS: The trunk rotation angle and elbow joint angle were significantly larger in the control condition than in the fixed condition. Fixed condition was terminated earlier than the control condition because of localized fatigue. There were no differences in the physiological responses between the groups. It was clarified that the straddling of lower limb and rotation of body trunk could contaminate the locomotion of the arm crank in the control condition. The movements in the fixed condition, on the other hand, are not contaminated by the muscles of the body trunk, which play an auxiliary role of the arm crank. In addition, it is suggested that fixing the body trunk during the arm crank test accelerated the upper limb fatigue and contributed to the shortening of time to exhaustion because of the isolated use of the upper limb for the exercise.CONCLUSIONS: We show that the arm cranking test using this new adjustable device can be used to monitor physiological parameters, and measurements are safe and require less time compared with the conventional method.